About

Alison Dahl Crossley

Alison Dahl Crossley

Associate Director

Alison Dahl Crossley is the Associate Director of Stanford's Michelle R. Clayman Institute for Gender Research. She leads the Institute's strategic focus, operations, and engages partners at Stanford and beyond through academic and community relations. She manages the Institute’s programming and fellowship programs: faculty research fellows, postdoctoral research fellows, graduate dissertation fellows, and undergraduate internships. Crossley leads the Institute team and works with the Faculty Director to set the thematic focus of the Institute. She is deeply invested in gender research and committed to the advancement of gender equality.

Crossley co-organized the Institute's Online Feminism Conference, drawing a diverse group of scholars and activists from across the country to discuss the challenges and possibilities of Internet activism. At Stanford, she teaches "Intersectionality and Social Movements: Gender, Race, Sexuality and Collective Organizing."

Crossley's areas of scholarly expertise include gender, social movements, and feminism. Her book Finding Feminism: Millennial Activists and the Unfinished Gender Revolution (2017) analyzes the contemporary tactics of millennial feminists who are part of an active movement for social change. Sharing personal stories of their everyday experiences with inequality, the young women in Finding Feminism employ both traditional and innovative feminist tactics. Arguing that the feminist wave framework perpetuates a narrow and inaccurate lens on feminism, Crossley introduces the concept of waveless feminism,which captures both the heterogeneity and intersectional nature of feminism. Crossley has also published articles and chapters about online feminism, the continuity of the women's movement, and women's movements in higher education. Her research has been covered by the New York Times, USA Today, and NPR.

Previously, Crossley was a postdoctoral fellow at the Clayman Institute for Gender Research. She earned her MA and PhD in Sociology with an emphasis in Feminist Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She received an MA in Media and Communications from the University of London, Goldsmiths College, and a BA in Women's Studies from Smith College (Phi Beta Kappa, Magna Cum Laude, with Highest Honors).